One of my longest and closest friends, Emily (not real name) has a 25 year old dd, Poppy, with high functioning autism. She’s a lovely beautiful girl who half the time you would never even know had autism but it still sometimes makes her hard to communicate with until she feels comfortable and she can freeze up or avoids talking to people even if she already knows them well. She is currently living at home at Emily’s house with her boyfriend as they’re waiting for the house purchase to be completely finished in the new year.
Last weekend DD and I went to a bar in our town. It was around 10pm and Poppy comes in, I didn’t want to bother her, especially as I didn’t think she’d welcome it due to how she normally is, so smiled and gave a quick wave as she walked past and she went off into the toilet. About half hour later we was sat in the smoking area and she comes over, she was very chatty and asking alot of questions which is very unusual for her, I assumed she was just drunk but DD pointed out her and all her friends were chewing gum and thought it may have been MDMA or coke they were on as it causes issues with the jaw and “that’s the only time people chew gum on nights out”. She went to the bar to get a drink and when dd and I went inside a few minutes later she wasn’t there but there was
a couple of poor bar staff cleaning up a huge amount of sick on the floor and apparently a girl had been kicked out (didn’t realise this was her at that time)
About an hour later we left the bar and saw her getting escorted out of a second bar, I checked on her and she was definitely on drugs as her pupils were enormous, I asked her boyfriend what’s gone on and he said they were kicked out because she was sick, I asked why she was sick and was it her in the other bar, it was and they don’t know why she was being sick as there was no build up “she was talking and suddenly large amounts of sick just came pouring out her mouth”, one of her friends suggested it was sensory thing due to the loud music and lights but it was obviously due to the drugs. I offered to call her mum to get her as it was just gone 11 at the time but they said they already booked a taxi.
Sunday afternoon I text Emily to check how poppy was just saying we saw her last night and she didn’t seem too fresh. Emily said she’s all good, got in a 4am but she had a good night. I checked what time we had booked our taxi home which was shortly after she had got into her taxi as I didn’t feel comfortable leaving her and it was 11:48 so i don’t know where she was until 4am. I decided to call emily and tell her about the sick, getting kicked out of 2 bars, the drugs, and leaving before midnight despite not arriving home until 4. Emily says she already knows about poppy using drugs and says it’s ecstasy pills that she has a testing kit for so knows what she’s taking (can that be true though?). She being using it on and off since 2018 and Emily has just decided to ignore it because there’s not much she can do seeing as she’s an adult with her own money, it’s not often and it gives poppy the chance to go out and enjoy nights out like others in their 20s without her autism getting in the way.
I talked about this with a mutual friend who is closer to Poppy who apparently also knew and doesn’t see any issue, she sent me links to studies on how mdma/ecstasy helps with the social anxiety that comes with autism but all the studies are old bar a few and when doing my own research I found some that argued against it. I’ve expressed how uncomfortable it makes me and said to one of our friends I don’t think I can carry on a friendship knowing Emily is condoning illegal drug use and everyone’s piled in on me and some are even claiming my DD only suspected the drug use due to her also using drugs which is not true.
On one hand I know it’s not my business, poppy is a lovely girl with a good job and does fine most the time and Emily is normally very straight edged but on the other hand I don’t understand how any parent can be aware of their children using horrid drugs and just shrugging it off, it’s made me question the type of person Emily is and how I’ve not had an inkling she was like this before, I also don’t like how they dragged my dd into it with their false accusations.